Studios: 50 square feet is the minimum size of a studio, and offer up to 250 square feet

A word of caution, though – don’t skimp on your building choice in order to pay a lower rent. Fixing broken buildings costs much, much more, over time, than renting good ones, to the point of shutting down maker-spaces that don’t acknowledge this fact. Redoing the roof of an industrial space (which usually happens once every 10-20 years) can cost upwards of $5-10 per square foot; installing a sprinkler system because the fire marshal caught you woodworking without sprinklers and threatened you with closure costs $10-15 per square foot; and repairing or replacing a broken or ineffective air conditioner with a new industrial-grade air conditioner can easily run $5,000 to $15,000 – just to name a few common building-scale maintenance expenses.

Typical membership rates vary anywhere from $40 per month for a ‘starving hacker’ membership at Noisebridge, to $175 per month at TechShop.

Treat your Hackerspace like a business, but it should not feel like a business to the members. Members want to just drop in, hack, teach, and learn. The administrators should strive to make this as easy as possible.